What Should One Do About Trolls?

DP etiquette: Please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that.

Troll: a person who starts quarrels or upsets or insults people; trolls act, consciously or not, with an intent to have fun, and/or to advocate an ideology or agenda, e.g., by distracting or sowing discord or distrust; trolls tend to provoke reason-killing emotional responses using, e.g., inflammatory comments, insults, bad faith arguments or deflecting or distracting comments such as straw man arguments and logical non-sequiturs 


Since moving to this blog at the end of last August, I've banned 15 people. The most recent casualty was yesterday. The trigger was refusal of a poster to provide any evidence that (1) debunked pro-Trump conspiracy theories are true and not debunked, or (2) any other false assertion the poster make was true. After at least six requests for information from me, the final retorts were:

“You mistakenly assume there is some burden to disprove a positive claim you've yet to falsify. ..... You are shifting the burden of proof and making ad hom attacks against me. If you think that's worthy of a ban. So be it. But make sure you understand why you are doing this... not because of what I believe.. but because of how you feel about it.”

I know exactly how I felt about it. I was frustrated that a person continually adducing false information and lies as truth refused to provide one shred of evidence in support of the false claims. It had nothing to do with disagreement per se. It had everything to do with the lack of a rational basis for discussion.

When a person is banned, Disqus allows reasons for the banning to be listed. I always list reasons. The reasons for banning 13 out of the 15 are first, “troll, liar, insult”, second is “troll, liar” and third is “troll.” Yesterday's ban fell into the 2nd category, although I never once called the poster a liar in my online comments to him/her and also never made an ad hominem attack. That was another of the liar’s lies.

What should one do?

America is now awash in dark free speech, (deceit, lies, unwarranted emotional manipulation, etc.). Most of it (~85% ?) is coming from the the president, the GOP, conservatives and pro-Trump populists, collectively “the right.” In my opinion, decades of dark free speech coming from the right is mostly responsible (~90% ?)  for the breakdown in trust, civility and fact-based reasoning that now dominates both rhetoric and behavior by the right. It is possible that the anti-evidence and anti-logic mindset may be or is slowly poisoning most everyone else who is not on the right.

When confronted with a commenter who adduces information that is shown to be false by links to reliable information sources and a refusal to provide evidence that the false information is true, what is a reasonable response? Should that kind of anti-evidence and anti-reason content be allowed a platform to further foment distrust and incivility? Why should lies and bad faith arguments be given equal footing with honest attempts to be reasonably grounded in facts, truths and sound reasoning?

Bad faith arguments from the right include assertions that the evidence I cite isn't proof and it thus does not carry any probative weight. Bad faith arguments also include (1) outright rejection of evidence from fact checkers, (2) assertions that reliable news sources do not have law enforcement power to investigate anything and thus everything they report is unreliable and not evidence at best, or a pack of lies at worst, and (3) since I do not agree with their assertions, I am a liberal extremist or radical socialist hell bent on enslaving the American people and establishing an American tyranny.

Why should bad faith arguments even be rebutted?  Responding to trolls and their bad faith arguments takes time and effort. Is it unfair to ask for an information source(s) that supports something a person disagrees with? If a discussion is based only on unsupported personal opinion, what value is it to society? At the very least, some relevant facts need to be identified and agreed on. After that, reasoning or logic can be discussed. Maybe reasoning is flawed because it is too partisan biased or doesn't logically flow from the facts. Those disagreements are mostly (~99% ?) not resolvable, but at least they can shed light on why people disagree. In my opinion, that has some social value.

Questions this raise include, is there social value in engaging with trolls and their false and bad faith arguments? If so, what is the value? Can a troll be identified by means other than taking the time and effort to try to engage with them?